in other news, i have a rash.

this is not really news. at least not to me. or holly. as i am always getting some sort of rash. it’s annoying, and, at 31, getting a little old.

i spent much of yesterday and today running to doctors and pharmacies, with the top of my hands and wrists itching like crazy, praying i didn’t see anyone i know since my eyelids are swelling up, too. oh yes. yes yes yes. as a grumpy ex-colleague of mine used to say: “if it’s not one thing, it’s another” (the not-too-distant cousin of the equally annoying “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” which she also favored. i cannot stand either one of those expressions, btw. it’s like, well, duh. there’s truly always going to be something. it’s called life.)

anyway, i have a theory about this rash, but i’m going to hold off and keep you waiting until my book comes out. in the meantime, it’s keeping me up at night–or at least waking me up–and making me glad we have our overpriced/gay-unfriendly cobra plan. i am hoping the antihistamines i was prescribed work so i won’t have to take the scary steroid pack i was also prescribed b/c woohboy, the one time i had to take that (for chronic sinus headaches) on about the second day i was filled with such a sudden, ravenous, completely insane hunger that i swear i could have eaten a couch cushion. or my arm. good thing we had tositos in the house. i wish i would have chewed them better b/c they scratched my throat.

anyway, the rash kind of threw a temporary wrench into my very temporary joy that a national story i wrote was going to be picked up by the today show, which is my very favorite show next to the golden girls (yes, apparently i’m 80). it is my big dream to be on w/meredith, matt, anne and al. i got word that a reporter was going to do it and i immediately thought: OMG MY RASH. THE RASH HAS MOVED TO MY EYELIDS AND THEY’RE STARTING TO SWELL AND I’M GOING TO LOOK LIKE I HAVE A PEANUT ALLERGY AND I JUST ATE A PB&J IN ROCKEFELLER CENTER AND NEED AN EPI-PEN.

my panic was, of course, unwarranted (as it usually is), b/c even tho they’re probably doing the story this week, not only will i not be on, but, for various (long winded) reasons, i will not even be mentioned. this is fine, tho. b/c i want my first visit to the today show to be for my book. and just the mere fact that something i wrote, that i came up with the idea for (while in weird-o acupuncture over the summer) is being picked up by my fave news show makes me extremely happy. and plus, i have a rash. it’s bad enough just telling you about it. like hell i’m gonna go on national tv w/it. c’mon now

something better change around here or else somebody’s gonna lose an eye

that’s pretty much what i said to holly. after she said, with a sick smirk on her face, that she felt like punching me in the throat. which was in response to me telling her that i felt like elbowing her in the face.

yes, folks, this is the face of pms X 2, which is what i talked about the other day. which is perhaps the biggest downfall of being a partnered gay female of childbearing age. since it’s about my turn to get my “monthly gift” (ha, those commercials are so funny) this PROVES that *i* JESSICA am the ALPHA FEMALE. i have, with my pheromones or whatever the hell it is that does it, dragged her ass into my cycle.  not that i’m gloating. well maybe a little just b/c i think it’s really funny. but the gloating lasts about two seconds considering the havoc hormones have wreaked on our household the past couple weeks.

i love holly. i love her dearly. we love each other dearly. but i am telling you something’s got to give, or, yes, somebody’s going to lose an eye.

it’s like this push-pull. when i get hormonal, i don’t want her near me. but whatever prehistoric pheromones are lurking just under (or on?) my skin make her morph into peppy le peu. she’s suddenly all over me. i’m like EW GET OFFA ME! and she’s like, well, she basically like the clip below.

(watch her face. oh that is SO me right now.)

did you see what happens to him at the end? yeah.

anyway, that pretty much sums up us right now. when we’re not at each other’s throats, she’s on me like white on rice. sigh.

i’m tired of telling you how crappy this town is, so tonight i’m gonna show you

i’ve kind of had it today. i was going to blog (yesterday, but i got too tired) about all the special things holly did for my birthday (and all the wonderful facebook notes i got throughout the day, even the day before) but baltimore city has ruined things again. so instead i’m going to rant about our ghettoass neighborhood. specifically our alleyway.

if you have a weak stomach i suggest you stop reading now.

they say a picture’s worth a thousand words. and up until this point, i haven’t shown you photos of crap in/the antics of our shittyass neighborhood in order to protect our privacy. but alleyways are fairly anonymous.

so here you go:

that’s the alley behind our house. about a week ago.

see that flat, rotting thing on the right? that’s a dead rat.
and that sewer right there? that’s a chesapeake bay water drain! like blue crabs? that’s what you’re eatin’, folks!

here’s what it looks like right now:

and you know what i especially love? i love how the city fined *us*, we got a notice this afternoon, for not having our trash “in the proper receptacle,” which we always do, btw, it’s just that the recycling guys refused to pick up the one bag that wouldn’t fit in our city-approved yellow recycling can last week.

We, of course, will be requesting a hearing about this,I wrote our councilperson and the mayor (i heard they actually read the emails she gets) tonight, but it is a true slap in the face considering how much we actually care about our neighborhood. We’re the ones that shout out our bedroom windows that we’re calling the police when we see our neighbors literally being beaten to a pulp in the middle of the night–without us shouting, they might be dead. (For the record, we called the police. This has happened twice.) We’re the ones that stood with the young mother (who didn’t speak any English) directly in front of our house many months ago that was sucker-punched by a bunch of teenage boys while her two young children were sitting–scared and bewildered–in her car, until the police showed up. We’re the ones with the carbon monoxide detector that, two winters ago, saved the lives of the temporary residents of the once-vacant house next door  (the six men living there were using propane to heat their entire home since they didn’t have power). Look up “Jessica X” and “Holly X” in your 311 records and you’ll see how many times we’ve called about so many different things in our neighborhood. Thus far, I haven’t seen a single thing improve. And now, the icing on the cake: a $50 fine.

as i was taking photos of all the crap out back this afternoon (to attach to the email), i saw one of our neighbors walking up the alley towards me. she’s a rollergirl, seems tough as nails, and she told me about a junkie she saw in the alley this morning, passed out, needle still in her arm. and it’s just like, look. i know all cities have their problems. but some days this place downright sucks. esp. when you’ve put so much of your hard-earned money into renovating a once-crackhouse in a neighborhood that seemed like it was getting better, but instead got a whole lot worse.

i wish i could show you a photo of the front of our house, which is pretty nice, i must say, but alas, the privacy. i promise the alley’s a whole lot worse than the actual street. and i gotta say: our alley’s one of the worst in the neighborhood. i honestly cannot tell you why, but it is. anyway, i wanted to show you. you can hate me now, since you probably barfed up your dinner.

so about my birthday–and sticking with this general grossness theme i’ve got going on tonight–i got a special gift from my parents that arrived today in a truck and a knock on the door:

an exterminator.

yes, i asked my parents for an exterminator for my birthday. (that’s kind of how you know your life is more than a little ridiculous: you ask for an exterminator for your birthday) and they totally got one for me. i was so happy when he (“the orkin man”) showed up. he was very nice–perhaps a bit offbeat, but, from personal experience, i’m going to hypothesize that most probably are–and pretty chatty.

holly likes to study w/the tv on (that’s why i have headphones on right now; marriage is about compromise, right?) so as she was working away on her cute lil netbook, she had a movie going in the background.

“what is that, ‘fools rush in’?” he asked, craning his neck over from the mouse traps he was setting to see the screen.

“yeah,” holly said. “it’s one of my favorites.”

“oh me, too,” he said. ”i love that one. you know which one i also love? whassit called…oh, i know,  ’sweet home alabama!’ that’s a good one. and that actress, whasser name, i don’t know her name…murphy brown, the one that played the new york city mayor? she was spot-on (he was laughing at this point). she was great.”

i knew holly and i were thinking the same thing: our exteminator likes chick flicks??? 

i came thiiiiis close to asking him what he thought of one of our all-time favorites, ‘how to lose a guy in 10 days,’ but stopped myself for fear of embarrassing our surprisingly sensitive exterminator (who picked up a fairly huge rigamortis dead rat outside, placed it in a doubled up safeway bag and put it in his supplybox about five minutes before this) in case i was pushing it too far. (all joking aside, i wanted to know if he liked it.)

anyway, it was probably the best present i could possibly get. aside from things money can’t buy. like being (accidentally) woken up by your partner before the sun’s even up as she’s preparing to leave to get you a triple shot tall soy latte from starbucks, croissant, fresh oj, a bouquet of fall flowers and two cards (one just words, one with music) and present them to you upon her return. (yes, i cried. talk about supersensitive. i just love being loved by her.)

and now i had to ruin this perfectly gross/obnoxious post by getting all sappy. again.

would it make you feel any better if i told you that the honeymoon phase of holly and i both being unemployed and home all day together (except when she’s in class) is over?

how do you know when the honeymoon phase is over, you ask? probably when your partner tells you she’s gonna put you in a “sleeper hold,” which is apparently some kind of dorkyass navy headlock (she was in the navy reserves for 11 years). she thinks it’ll quiet me down. haha. yeah, right, babe. gonna take more than a headlock to quiet my ass down.

if you ask me, every corner house around here is suspect

baltimore has a reputation for at least a couple things. one is murder. another is, um, drugs. (ok, remind me why we’re living here again?) another (less scary one, depending one neighborhood you’re in) is corner bars. we have a lot of corner bars around here, esp where we live. there’s also corner stores. annnnd…corner funeral homes.

i pretty much forget about the funeral homes, b/c i pass certain ones so often. but when we’re taking walks thru the neighborhood, it dawns on me:

wait, those really *are* corner funeral homes. and ppl live next to them. like, they share walls. they share–gulp–basement walls. and you know what happens in the basement of funeral homes…

there are only four rows of bricks that separate us from our neighbors. i know this b/c we gutted our rowhouse before we moved in (it was a bonafide boarded-up crackhouse when we bought it, blood stains on the carpet, needles in the walls, the whole nine yards) and we got to know the anatomy of the average baltimore rowhouse pretty well. and i will be damned if there’s only a couple feet of brick separating me from the inner-workings of a funeral home. (i mean absolutely no offense to any funeral home owners or workers that might be reading this; i give huge props to you guys) i mean, geez, i have enough trouble going down to our basement as it is.

so here’s what got me thinking about all of this:

we’re out for a nice long city walk yesterday morning, and there was a corner funeral home just ahead of us. i tend to really scrutinize buildings and peer down alleys while we’re walking around, i don’t know why, i’m just curious, i guess, and i really zoomed in on this place.

we’re walking right next to it, and i see a basement window. i notice that it’s 100 percent open and also in the exact size and shape of a…yeah. a coffin. and there’s a fan perched in the open window. and it’s…it’s on. holly noticed it, too. and then we both held our breath and were like ewwwwwwwww……

“you couldn’t pay me enough to live next to a funeral home!” i said.

“um, yeah,” holly said.

“hell, you couldn’t pay me enough to live on the same block as one!”

we agreed on that one, too.

“actually, you couldn’t pay me enough to even live in a corner house around here, b/c, if you ask me, every single of ‘em is suspect,” i surmised, shaking my head.

the homes around here, some of them, like ours, for example, have gone thru so many transformations. and so, in my opinion, any corner house in the city could have been a bar at one point, or some other business–including a funeral home.

i mean, a guy did OD in our backyard, apparently, a couple years before we moved in. (our neighbor told us; story for the book, so you’ll have to wait on the gory details ) but he didn’t kick it in the house, you see. i mean, maybe someone kicked it in our house in it’s almost 110-year history. but at least there wasn’t a morgue downstairs. i mean, at least i don’t think there was. b/c we’re not a corner house. unless funeral homes aren’t always in corner houses… aw hell, now i’ve freaked myself out.

“maybe that’s why the house next door to us is so weird and big,” holly just chimed in.

geez, babe. thanks for that. as if the peeping tom shut-in across the street didn’t freak me out enough…

there are better things out there for me

i know this. i feel it. b/c i was laid off today. one door closes, a window opens.

i wasn’t the only one, either. ten percent of the organization was cut, 18 ppl.

i’ll tell you all, for those of you that don’t know me personally, or don’t know me well, i was miserable for a long time, so i’m looking at this as a blessing, an opportunity, more than anything.

i’m not going to go into it b/c, while i may have what some might call a big mouth (me??? never), i like to keep things classy. (anyway, all the juicy stuff is for my book, so you’re just going to have to wait ) but. i will say the following:

1) i have a sneaking suspicion i’m going to be getting a lot less headaches now.

2) while i’m stressing about cashflow (holly was laid off three weeks before our wedding, so, this doubly sucks) i am overwhelmed w/joy that i will be able to enjoy the season that i am ape-sh*t crazy for: fall.

 as in, i won’t be chained to my (ex) desk in my (ex) windowless office. i’ll be able to actually (gasp!) walk around, go to the park (with holly. during the *day*…sigh), stomp on soon-to-be-crunchy leaves and pet as many puppies as i want w/out any concern for time. as in: no busybody admin ladies who are all oddly obsessed w/my comings and goings noting in their little black admin books when i’ve left and when i return. the delight i feel at the prospect of this …well, i almost have no words for it.

3) twitter. w/said admin busybodies out of my hair, the tweets are unlocked, baby! it is ON! i’m in the process of putting the feed back up. bring it!

and, finally, last but certainly certainly not least:

4) lunch. lunch at home. and i don’t even have to wait til 11:30. (and i can eat it on the roof.)

good night, my lovelies. and to my facebook peeps: a million thanks for the kind words! (turns out facebook isn’t just great for coming out, launching blogs, having Big Fat Gay Weddings (BFGWs) and birthdays. it’s also pretty awesome when you lose your job.) you all are saying what i’ve been thinking since i got the news at 10 this morning, my breakfast barely digested and my to-go coffee mug from home still hot: this is a brand new beginning for me. and i’ll tell you something in case you don’t already know:

i’m completely unsinkable.

and like all those friggin cats that found their way into our walls this winter, i always land on my feet. something wonderful is going to come of this. i don’t know what right now, but it will. and altho i’m stressed in an unfamiliar new way, i have my life back. i. have my life. back. and i’m never going to lose myself like that again.

my hair was enormous this weekend

me, without my flat iron. (also, apparently without a top.) "it's the humidity!"

there’s no two ways about it. it was simply…gigantic. to the point where i wondered out loud how holly could love me, a girl with such enormous hair. [holly, perhaps the most non-judgemental person i've ever come across in my entire life when it comes to someone's looks, only laughs and shakes her head at this. it's truly only once in a while when she makes a Medusa comment--um, yeah, that's the mythical greek goddess/monster (?) who had curly, scary snake hair (as in: real live snakes; see photo above. most representations of said mythical bad hair lady are scary so i found a kind of hott one). and to be fair, i actually made the first crack to her about it years ago (actually i think my brother made that crack back in the 80s??!), so she was following my lead.]

the size of my hair was due in no small part to the official-non-official start of summer: memorial day. the baltimore/dc area is renowned for its humidity. and the heat starts early here. being new homeowners, we have to get our air conditioning unit checked (i think you have to get it checked every two years? and this is our third summer in our once-crackhouse) and our good ol hvac (heating/ventilation/air-conditioning) company hasn’t called us back yet, so we’re relying on the meager breezes coming thru our rowhouse windows and ceiling fans to cool us down and um, yeah. it’s not working.

so not only did i not straighten my hair this long wkend [why bother? it was just us two and we were doing homeowner/maintenance stuff all weekend. plus that's why *hats* were created and i do love me some hats! (i'm wearing my fave  in my "about jessica" bio pic)] but i sweated to the oldies all wkend long. meaning: i glanced at our digital thermostat numerous times (ok, every time i passed it) and it read, at its highest…. (gulp)….87 degrees. (silence) i know. so i tried covering my huge hair up with bandanas (this, holly as well as the girls in my book club will tell you, only makes me look like i’m in a “latina gang,” of which there are probably at least a couple in our neighborhood. my perpetual frosty lipstick only adds to the effect), did the tried-and-true-big-sunglasses-casually-pushing-big-hair-back move, headbands, even a discarded t-shirt sleeve (we make our own cool punkrock tshirts in our household ) but nothing worked. instead, i guess i sort of embraced its hugeness over the holiday. and i am a stronger person b/c of this. 

while our a-c may not be on at this time, there are loads of ppl in our neighborhood that don’t have a-c at all, which leads to some interesting daytime, and, unfortunately, nighttime, stoop/street activity. (the sort that makes it downright hard to sleep with the windows open at night, which we are doing out of necessity these days) goodness gracious, i don’t even know where to start. it’s all blending together….was the naked old man hanging out his second-floor window this past weekend or some recent weeknight?? (he told us he just got off a spaceship. he’s a drunk, but a nice one. and no, i’m not lying. you can’t make this sh*t up!) i couldn’t even tell you, i don’t even remember. but i’m going to think about it and get back to all of you later.

eff you, miss california

so the embattled miss california has obviously had enough of all us forward-thinking folks pickin’ on her and she’s decided to go to dc to launch a campaign against same-sex marriage. she of the “well, i think it’s great that americans are able to choose one or the other. we live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage” is launching a campaign.

[which leaves me wondering: "opposite marriage"?? what is that? isn't that, like, divorce? [i am quoting her directly, btw, from her answer at the miss usa pageant, which you can see here.]

i’m kind of irritated w/the today show (one of my fave shows; hi, meredith! hi, matt! hi, anne! love ya!), as they aired an “exclusive” interview w/her this a.m.  i already had a blaring headache and her squeaky little pageant voice just made it worse.

i’m like, look. you’re obviously not that bright. also? it’s also not very “christian” of you to launch a “campaign” against ppl who love each other and want to tie the knot. this is what kills me about “religious” ppl: you say you’re all religious and want to walk in the ways of G-d. the thing is, G-d doesn’t shun! or ostracize. or hate. (at least not the G-d i know. i’m jewish btw.) and neither did jesus. but whatevs.

anyway, i’m just like, shut the eff up. stick to vasiline-ing your teeth and waving and being thin and smiling and trying on gowns and stuff.

ppl like holly and i are obviously trying to undermine the american family. you know, like, our eight years together, where we’ve like…cooked together and gone to museums and drive in our cars and get haircuts and stuff. obviously.

here’s the thing i don’t get

there’s been a lot of bad news around the baltimore area lately. in the span of one week, two entire families (wife/husband/kids) have been killed in murder-suicides, both committed by fathers/husbands. one family had three kids, the other two. one lived in a quiet town outside baltimore, the other was from new york visiting their college daughter (a loyola student; apparently, she walked into the towson hotel room they were staying at and her father had already killed her mom and 11 year-old-sister).

more and more info keeps surfacing on both cases, and as much as it disturbs me, i keep reading. i mean, we all do. it’s human nature. everyone wants to find out why these sick things happened. what could possible lead a person to kill his entire family, kids and all? of course, as the “why” trickles out, so do details about the “how,” but i don’t even want to go there.

considering the state of affairs in this country, it’s not a complete surprise to me that the motives here were based in finance. debt, basically. also bad business practices in the latter case. so here’s the thing i just don’t yet:

you’re miserable. you’re drowning in debt. you want to kill yourself. so WHY TAKE YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY OUT????  why in the hell do you have to take your entire family down with you? most ppl w/families have life insurance policies. and these were middle class families, so they probably would have been taken care of if the father/husband took his own life. as much as it would suck and be awful, life would go on for the remaining family members. but instead, their lives were cut short. some of these were little kids.

the wife of a friend of mine called it narcissism. that these men thought they were so important, so essential, they if they had to go, they all did, b/c they could never go on w/out him. i never thought about it like that. but it could definitely be true.

the whole thing’s got me thinking about deranged, psychotic behavior in general. like, all these school shootings. these depressed, lonely kids hate their lives, hate themselves. so why the heck do you have to kill a dozen ppl and then yourselves??? i will never ever understand this.

this might just be my unfunniest blog entry yet, (you all know i live to make you laugh) but i just can’t stop thinking about all this. i promise next time i’ll be back to my old self. i’m just bummed lately, and haven’t been in the mood to joke around. (also spring headaches.)

if you have thoughts on all this (and i’m sure you), i’d love to hear them, so please chime in…

those housewives

despite my better judgement, i began watching bravo’s “the real housewives of nyc” last year. anyone who knows me knows that i have no airs when it comes to entertainment (or anything else, come to think of it). if it’s fun and i like it, i will watch it. or listen to it. and freely admit it. [case in point: britney. also: t.a.t.u. (fake russian lesbos), "maid in manhattan," "how to lose a guy in 10 days" and etc.]

i am very rarely an appointment tv watcher. meaning: i just watch my shows when they happen to be on. so i’m cleaning the kitchen last night, and it’s on. this is good kitchen-cleaning entertainment so i was thrilled.

anyway, this one lady (i forget her name but she has red hair) brings one of the other ladies [the "hot" one; no, not that one (the suspciously square-jawed chef) the other one (the one who likes to jog in traffic; wtf, i know, right?!)] to a private appt. with some sort of…purse maker. french lady? anyway, they’re sitting on the designer’s couch with a bunch of bags in front of them. like, on a coffee table. and they just look like…bags. call me “gay” (woman “gay” not man “gay”; two totally diff things and you know it and it’s ok to think it b/c i think it, too) but they really don’t look all that special. one is purple. another is red. one or two look like a snakeskin material.

so it’s the is the red-hair lady’s “birthday present”  (ok, i figured out who she is) to herself or from her husband or something. she’s like, hmmm, i think i like that one. yes, def. that one.

from my vantage pt, it looks like a knockoff of something i could find in tj maxx. [or, as my beloved late grandma would call it: "jt maxi" (oh grandma, you were so funny)] it’s red. and then the camera does a close-up of the pricetag: $16,000.

SIXTEEN. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. for a BAG!!! a BAG!!!

holly and i were watching together at this pt (yes, i was taking a break from said kitchen-cleaning) and were like, what? it was like a joke. a few more thousand dollars, and that’s the (low-end) starting salary of a recent undergrad. that’s more than some *cars*. that’s insane. and the craziest thing is that she barely thought anything of it. i can’t begin to wrap my mind around that sort of wealth. $16k could help us out a lot. that could alleviate a lot of worries for a lot of ppl. but for her it’s just a bag.

then her husband surprised her with a new, huge, black benz suv, and she whines that it doesn’t connect to her iphone or something so he says, ok, this one will be mine. i’ll get you another. (silence)

then there was a blowout fight about a tennis match. and like, jewelry shopping and some interior designing.

i know the entertainment value in these sorts of shows is the ridiculousness of it all. the great majority of ppl in this country don’t live the way these ladies and their families do. and so we all watch, mouths agape, as they “live the good life” and buy $16,000 bags and fight over tennis and freakout about charity events and shoes and boobs and decorators and whatnot. and mostly, it’s just entertainment for me. anything annoying i can usually forget in about 10 minutes (or less; yes, i have the attn span and sometimes the memory of a hamster, just ask holly and she’ll tell you). but that $16k bag thing last night really got to me. like it’s burrowed its way into my brain.

even in a good economy it’s hard to make ends meet, let alone treat yourself to something nice. (hell, holly and i have been together eight years and we have yet to even take a real vacation together. we didn’t even go on a honeymoon.) i guess i’m just trying to say…just…wow. i mean, look, if you have the money, i guess…you know? who am i to say? but that sh*t just blows my mind. and yet, i will continue to watch. and be disgusted and shocked. and watch again. total trainwreck that is reality tv. if you watch the show, i’d love to know what you think about all this. even if you don’t watch it. you know i love hearin from my peeps (no, not the marshmallow easter peeps! you. it means you )

in other news: passover cannot pass over soon enough. i made matzah pizza tonight! help!

served

saturday morning we were awoken by an obnoxious succession of doorbell rings followed by heavy pounding on our door. when i say ”morning” i mean before 7 a.m., like 6:50 a.m.  and by “obnoxious” i mean effing awful and rude. i want to note that holly and i were in an exceedingly pleasant deep sleep until this point.

we were like, “what THE?!!”

as holly put on her slippers and ran downstairs, i lifted our shade and peered down, expecting to see a ups or fedex truck and wanting to yell down something about being a mothereffin persistent deliveryman. instead i saw a burly dude with glasses and a ballcap staring up at me. he had a red car with its blinkers on parked in the middle of the street behind him. i got a bad feeling and suddenly wanted to open the window and throw my pointiest shoes at his dumbass face looking up at me.

a few moments later, i hear our door beep open (our alarm system; we’ve got the place wired up like fort knox) and a man’s deep voice says, “are you holly [lastname].” i started running downstairs, my hair poofed out (didn’t straighten it yet), pajama pants blowin in the wind, “holly! noooooooooooo!!!!”

we were getting served.

all those unpaid dc parking tickets holly got when she used to stay over at my apartment in adams-morgan had finally come back to haunt us. he was going to arrest her. this was it. did i mention my cousin was visiting *for the very first time* from philly and was sleeping in the guest room??? i was like, great. great introduction to our calm home life.

“please sign here.”

as i arrived downstairs, i saw her take hold of a clipboard and a pen that this a-hole pushed thru the practically shut door.

“holly, noooooooooooo! DON’T SIGN THAT!”

she told me to simmer down, and shut the door in the guy’s face. the idiot knocked and she cracked open the door.

“hey, it’s raining out here!” he said, (total pansyass).

“i don’t know you,” holly said. “you’re going to have to wait out there while i read this.”

then she shut the door in his face. good girl.

my hands and feet were ice cold. what the hell was all this??!! we flipped thru the papers and finally found what we were looking for. an electrician, this effing awful electrician we fired back when we were renovating our once-crackhouse, was sueing us. we had a courtdate.

i breathed a huge sigh of relief. so she wasn’t getting arrested. my baby wasn’t going to jail. we’re only being sued. thank G-d.

(silence)

hey, i know what you’re thinking right now. but let me tell you: when enough crappy stuff has happens to you, you really and truly start looking at the bright side.

so yeah. a little background here. we bought a boarded up rowhouse about three years ago. it was pretty much a drughouse. so we demo’ed the whole thing, down to the original bricks and joists. holly designed the inside and hired all the subcontractors to rebuild it from the inside out. the electrician we hired was pretty terrible. he didn’t show up to do the work most of the time. when he did, he did it wrong. he also put us a month behind schedule (we were living in an apt. while searching for the house and then during the renovation). so holly fired his ass and found a new electrician. we wound up paying even more money b/c of this jerk to pay the new electrician to fix the idiot’s work. about a year or so later, the original electrician said we owed him x amount of money and sent a bunch of generic collections agency lawyers after us. we hired our own lawyer and got them to drop it. that lawyer told us he seriously doubted they’d come back after us. maybe he’s grasping at straws b/c the economy’s so bad and he doesn’t have a lot of work right now? all i know is that he’s not getting a red cent from us and he can kiss our collective ass.

let me tell you something, and i offer a disclaimer in case you or someone you know or are close to or someone in your family is in any kind of construction business, b/c there’s exceptions to every rule: contractors are pretty much the scum of the earth. this is my opinion only, and i’m sure i sound like a major effing jerk to say that, esp on the internets. but i offer the following from experience: they will take you for all you have. they will rip you off and never look back. they will spill insanely sweet iced tea all over your subfloors (and not even bother to pick up the overturned bottles) until roaches are crawling everywhere. they will piss on your basement floor (yes, this happened to us). and electricians are the worst of  em all.

it’s kind of like: i thought this was all over. all this headache over our renovation. but obviously it’s not.

so we signed the damned papers and handed them back to the guy. (look, i know it’s just his job but he was a total jerk and too bad you got stuck standing out in the rain! what do you expect? us to invite you in and make you a mothereffin pot’a coffee?!! get a grip, dude! grow a set and stand out in the rain for a minute. it’s only drizzling you big baby!) somehow my cousin fell back to sleep after all that commotion. we did, too, tho i hate to do that b/c sleeping too late can set off migraines for me. (i turned out to be ok)

she padded downstairs a couple hours later and was like, “what was all that?”

“we’ve been served,” i said. i couldn’t help but laugh. our ridiculous lives. like i always say: never a dull moment.

holly and i have a way of putting these sorts of things in the back of our minds, b/c really, what can you do? if we focused on all this, we’d wind up in a padded room (hopefully they would put us in the same one? not funny but it is).

so we did what all normal ppl would do in this situation: we made coffee and then went out for omlettes.

i meant to write about all this earlier in the week, but i just didn’t have the mental energy to do it. also i’m working on my book proposal, which is a serious endeavor, i’ve come to see. anyway, now you know what’s up. i know, i know. you all really want to stay over at our place to experience all this excitement. but there’s a waitlist, you see, b/c we only have one guestroom (!). haha. jk jk.

the upside to all this is that now i can say to holly: YOU GOT SERVED!!! i don’t think that one is ever going to get old. i’ve said it about 20 times since saturday and it’s still pretty damn funny.